


“Kissing For The Clueless” (Jedi Knight Edition)

by jessebee



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Although it really kinda isn't, Because I like these tropes okay?, Because we are all about the tropes here, But not on-screen, Do NOT forget the fluff, Fake Marriage, Fake/Pretend Relationship, First Kiss, Fluff, M/M, Qui-Gon Lives, Sharing a Bed, because I said so
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-06
Updated: 2018-08-06
Packaged: 2019-06-22 12:48:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,051
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15582348
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jessebee/pseuds/jessebee
Summary: They're a couple! Only for the mission! Whatever will they do?(or: tropes! tropes! we got yer tropes right here!)





	“Kissing For The Clueless” (Jedi Knight Edition)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Meggory](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Meggory/gifts).



It’s their eighteenth standard day here on Lysstern, and Obi-Wan is not precisely sure just how much more he can take.

It’s the little things that are killing him.  The soft looks, the gentle touches, the nearness – Force, the _nearness_.  Obi-Wan had spent more than a decade living with Qui-Gon Jinn, but he’s pretty sure it was never as bad as this is now.  Of course he’s been out on his own as a Knight for the last two years, so it’s possible that his memory isn’t – no. No, that’s not it.

It never was this bad.

Qui-Gon is close to him now; so very, very close.  Not the closeness of teacher and student, of teaching master and the padawan being taught, but the closeness of – intimates.  Lovers.

Which is what the two of them are, of course, to their hosts and the rest of the city, because that’s what this mission demands of them: that they be a couple, devoted lovers, older man and younger, as this culture’s norms expect.

Obi-Wan isn’t inexperienced, exactly.  He’s had a few sexual partners over the years, and even one he’d call a lover.  He knew how lovers behaved, he’d have no trouble simulating a relationship, certainly, with the man he’d wanted in truth since he’d been sixteen.  He’d thought he was ready.

He’d thought wrong.  

And it’s killing him by the tiniest, most exquisitely painful increments possible.

Qui-Gon has finished his first-meal when Obi-Wan comes into the common eating room, but not by much.  The man is still sitting at his accustomed end of the long table, used dishes pushed aside, data-padd in one big hand and cup in the other.  Which means who-ever else had been eating must have just left. Reading while eating is something the Lyssterians consider quite rude, certainly when one has company.  

 _Calm_ , Obi-Wan counsels himself, as he walks across the common room toward his old master.   _Calm_.  

They are sharing a sleeping room, of course, and in that room there is only one bed.  

Of course.  

Obi-Wan has been taking cold water-showers in the mornings ever since the fourth one, when he’d woken up wrapped around Qui-Gon like the man was the galaxy’s best pillow, morning erection snuggled perilously close to the cleft of Qui-Gon’s arse.  

How he got himself unwrapped and out of the bed without waking Qui-Gon, he still doesn’t know.  And if Qui-Gon has any inkling that his former padawan had been humping him in their sleep, he hasn’t let on.

But.

For the last ten-day now, Qui-Gon’s been – different.  Not upset, but distracted, perhaps, as though something had dropped a pebble into the pool of that _deep-Force-calm_ that’s as much a part of him as his blue eyes and crooked nose.  It’s a situation Obi-Wan has _seen/felt_ a few times before, when there is something deeply disturbing that Qui-Gon is considering.

Obi-Wan has a rather horrible, sinking-deep feeling that he knows what that pebble was.

“Good morning, Qui,” he says as he reaches the table, which is between him and the counter with the kaffin-pot, kashmeal in its warmer, and the thrice-blessed hot water for tea.

“Good morning,” Qui-Gon rumbles in return, and tilts his head for the obligatory morning-greeting kiss.  There’s no one in the room to witness the lapse if they don’t, but Obi-Wan is loathe to give up any moments of contact, painful as they may be, and the memories they make.

They could well be the only moments he will have.

Obi-Wan leans down and brushes his mouth against Qui-Gon’s cheek, feeling beard-bristle tickle, coarsely soft, against his lips.  Trying not to inhale the smell of the man because he doesn’t want to be needing another cool shower this early in the day.

But Qui-Gon seems – elsewhere, his attention never really straying from the padd in his hand.  He doesn’t even meet Obi-Wan’s eyes.

The sinking-deep feeling in Obi-Wan’s gut, sinks deeper.

The meal is awkward, to say the least.  After Obi-Wan’s two conversational gambits meet only with what response is necessary and no more, he retreats into his kashmeal and tea and absolutely does not panic.  It wouldn’t help anyway.

He gives up on the cereal when it becomes clear that his stomach is less than pleased.  The tea is a solace, though, and Obi-Wan is contemplating its dark depths when Qui-Gon shifts back from the table.  

“Not hungry this morning?”

Paying more attention than had been apparent, evidently.  “First-meal is still a hit and miss thing for me, I’m afraid,” Obi-Wan says, grabbing the sudden conversational life-ring, “for all that you were sure I’d grow out of that.  But their tea leaf is lovely; certainly a variety to infiltrate the Order’s commissary with.”

“Indeed.”  But Qui-Gon is _looking_ at him now, deep ocean gaze beloved and intense, peeling back the mature Jedi Knight layers to the small, squirmy _Obi-Wan_ within, the way Qui-Gon’s always been able to do, intentionally or not.

And that is, quite suddenly, too much.  

“I think I will take a walk,” Obi-Wan blurts out, rising from his chair in a motion that does not, Force-willing, look as uncontrolled as it actually is, because he really must move now or twitch out of his skin.  “As we have no obligations to our hosts, for the first time, until tomorrow.”

Qui-Gon’s still _looking_ at him.  “It would be time better spent discussing the mission and making plans for next week.”

 _Would it, now?_ Obi-Wan thinks, stung.  And just as suddenly things reverse, and now it’s more than easy to stand still and meet – and hold – those blue eyes.  “It would be better if I were better able to sit down for the discussion. An unexercised padawan is a twitchy one, is how you always put it, as I recall?”

“You’re no longer a padawan.”

“You’re correct,” Obi-Wan says, and lets his diction pop on the final ‘t.’  “I’m not.”

Something shifts beneath the ocean surface and then – to Obi-Wan’s shock – the older man drops his gaze.  “I know,” Qui-Gon says at last, softly, and there’s something in his rich voice, maybe several somethings, that Obi-Wan can’t parse past his own surprise.  “I am – very much aware of that.”

Now Obi-Wan isn’t at all sure he wants to leave, but he doesn’t see how, exactly, to stay.  He takes his dishes and Qui-Gon’s as well to the counter sink and rinses them before putting them in the sanitizer, but the delaying tactic brings no enlightenment.  Out of excuses, he turns back to the table.

Qui-Gon has put his hands together palm to palm and rested them on the table-top, and is looking either at them or at the grain of the bassha-wood, Obi-Wan can’t tell.  It’s a posture Obi-Wan’s never seen his master take before.

He walks back to Qui-Gon’s side.  “I’ll have my comm, of course,” because he’s run out of the words he should say and the other words, the ones he wants to say, he can’t.  

He lays his hand lightly on Qui-Gon’s shoulder, one of the signals they’d agreed upon at the beginning of the mission, to warn of a coming kiss or other more intimate touch.  This time Obi-Wan nearly starts – the broad shoulder beneath tabard and tunics is like durasteel. “Qui-Gon?”

Qui-Gon looks up and the light catches in his eyes, unfathomable.  “Obi-Wan,” he says. He turns in his seat and reaches up to take Obi-Wan’s hand, half-swallowing it in his larger one.  The calluses on his palm and fingers are hard and familiar. These are the hands that have touched Obi-Wan for half of his lifetime; the hands that have meant belonging and guidance, comfort and friendship, Master.  Love.

The expression on Qui-Gon’s face though, that is not familiar at all, and it starts a curious tingle in Obi-Wan’s stomach.  “Qui-Gon, what is it?”

“May I kiss you, Obi-Wan?”

 _May you_ **_what?!_ **  

Obi-Wan freezes in place, except for his mouth which drops open as the curious tingle explodes into a swarm of hot stingflies, fluttering madly around his abdomen, every one of them shrieking a giddy confused ecstatic “YESYESYES!”  But –

“You have been kissing me,” is what he hears himself whisper, completely without his brain’s input or permission.

Whatever Qui-Gon sees on his face, it’s apparently encouraging, because his grip on Obi-Wan’s hand tightens.  “Not as I have wanted to.”

He pulls gently, asking, and despite his daze Obi-Wan answers, as he has for so much of his life when this man has asked.  Yes.

Qui-Gon urges him close and kisses him.

It’s warm and soft, no more than a delicate pressure, the tickle of hair mingling with the dry of slightly chapped lips.  Nothing they have not already done, but nothing at all that they have ever done before. Deliberate. Sweetness layered over something new, that Qui-Gon is either letting Obi-Wan feel for the first time or that has finally escaped the Master’s control: a sense of deep, visceral want that _trembles_ , even leashed beneath adamantine shields and iron will.

Qui-Gon kisses him, and lets him go.

It’s a lightning strike, and the nimbus glows violet-white at the edges of Obi-Wan's vision when he pries his eyes open.  He blinks down at Qui-Gon’s face, so close, so _open_ , full of everything that fills up Obi-Wan's own chest that he can’t breathe.

Breathing’s overrated.

He kisses Qui-Gon this time, sinks his free hand into the thick hair at the back of Qui-Gon’s head and kisses him hard.  Qui-Gon’s mouth opens under his and Obi-Wan plunges in, drowning eagerly, discovering tea and sweetener and something indescribable that is only Qui-Gon.  The years of hopeful longing and hopeless love surge up and Obi-Wan lets them go, lets them wash out into the Force between them, because if he’s mistaken, if this isn’t what Qui-Gon truly wants –

Qui-Gon gasps against his mouth, and one big hand comes around the back of Obi-Wan’s neck and pulls him impossibly closer.

Eventually the breathing thing truly does become necessary and Obi-Wan breaks away, but only to pepper Qui-Gon’s face with urgent little kisses - cheekbones, proud nose, closed eyelids - before resting his forehead again Qui-Gon’s.  They’re both panting, Qui-Gon’s breath a moist brush across Obi-Wan’s face, a little sour, and how he’s lived this long without it, Obi-Wan has no clue. “I love you.”

Qui-Gon swallows, loud in the tiny space between them.  “I love you, too,” he says.

A faint hint of that same _tremble_ colors his deep voice and it’s quite, quite possible that Obi-Wan’s heart is going to stop from sheer joy.  “H-how long?” he asks, not knowing he’s asking until the words are out.

A faint snort.  “Years,” Qui-Gon murmurs.  “Before you were knighted.”

Truly?  But – “You never – ”  And it’s Obi-Wan’s turn to swallow.  “It’s been two years, Master; is there some sort of waiting period that no-one talks about?”

A louder snort this time and a wash of humor, as Qui-Gon moves away enough that Obi-Wan can see him clearly.  “That’s why, Padawan.”

Obi-Wan wrinkles his brow in question.

“I was part of the equation of your life, dear one; perhaps too big of a part,” Qui-Gon says, and shakes his head when Obi-Wan opens his mouth.  “You needed to be Knight Kenobi, not Padawan to Master Jinn. You needed to be your own person; to know who you are without me. Anything else would have been to betray you in the worst fashion.”  Qui-Gon’s hand moves, thumb caressing the tender skin beneath Obi-Wan’s ear in a most distracting fashion. “And _I_ needed to know, to be sure, that you know.”

Wonderful, marvelous, utterly exasperating man.  Obi-Wan's mouth pulls up at one corner. “I’ll sign a form if you’d like.”

The skin around Qui-Gon’s eyes crinkles.  “Your word has always been enough.”

And how is Obi-Wan supposed to remain composed with Qui-Gon saying things like that?  

He untangles them and steps back, only to take Qui-Gon’s hand again and urge him to his feet.  “I’ve changed my plans for the day. There’s a bed in our room that I most sadly neglected to put to rights, and I believe that requires prompt attention.”

“I thought you intended to get some exercise,” Qui-Gon says.

There’s no mistaking the undertones and Force-wash of teasing and desire, and Obi-Wan grins.  “Oh, I do.”

 

*

**Author's Note:**

> And then Meggory said:
> 
> Can I prompt you, lovely, since you’re so fucking good at these? How about combining QuiObi #7: routine kisses where the other person presents their cheek/forehead for the hello/goodbye kiss without even looking up from what they’re doing and #9: a little kiss, pulling back, only to go back in for a passionate one? Pretty please? 
> 
> I have tried to oblige :-)


End file.
